The dishevelled little man with the up-all-night complexion looked as though he might have dozed off in a bookie's in Leeds and woken up in a bar in Manhattan. But Damien Hirst's mood was good.

'He's done me a fucking favour, that mayor,' he said. 'He's put another nought on the end of all my prices.' The mayor: Rudy Giuliani, in the days when he was better known for saving New York from sleaze rather than from disintegration. The favour: deploying his genius for hyperbole unwittingly to turn Hirst into one of the most famous people in the city that likes to think of itself as the capital of the world.

In truth, though, it was not Hirst but Chris OÞli who was the main object of Giuliani's ire when Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection opened in Brooklyn in September 1999.

Black racists might have got away with denouncing Jews at the Million Youth March in Harlem. Soon the Ku Klux Klan would have its Þrst rally in the city. But dung? On the Virgin Mary? In a gallery supported by New York City money? You kidding me? Before this, most of the British art pack's proÞle was little higher than that of a rat on Spring Street in the dead of night. Hirst, ever the exception, had just been treated to a respectful proÞle in the sacrosanct New Yorker magazine but the general view, in as far as anybody bothered snifÞly to express one at all, was that this had all been done before, and rather better too.

Now everybody got what they wanted. Giuliani, nearing the end of his term in ofÞce and preparing a run for the Senate had an issue, and demanded that the Brooklyn museum's public funding be removed forthwith; the artists acquired an instant New York proÞle that Robbie or Kylie would kill for; and the Brooklyn Museum of Art had punters lining up round the block, regaled by an opening day cacophony that had never been corralled to dispute the reputation of, say, its well-regarded Egyptian collection ...

But what happened next? 'Sensation had no lasting effect on New York art and artists,' says art historian and curator Karen Wilkin, dismissively. 'I think its biggest effect actually was in terms of getting people to think about how museums are funded. And there's an issue about whether you chase popularity for its own sake - which obviously the museum did.

'In terms of art, the young British artists were a curiosity. The general feeling was that there was some very interesting work in the exhibition, but what's all the fuss about? Hirst is obviously one of the buzz words but everything has evaporated in the face of all the hype surrounding [the sculptor and Þlm-maker] Matthew Barney, who's just been called the artist of the century by a New York Times reviewer.'

Of all the YBAs, in fact, it's Jenny Saville who's best 'cracked' America. Colourfully described by New York Magazine as a 'prodigy from the Freud-Bacon school of British óeshmongers', Saville has had two solo shows in the US since Sensation, and was included in the 2001 touring exhibition Great British Paintings from American Collections alongside Turner, Constable, Hockney and, yes, Freud and Bacon.

Many members of the Britpack, including Saville, are represented in America by óamboyant US gallerist and dealer Larry Gagosian (at the time of writing embroiled in an art market tax investigation), a man often referred to as the PT Barnum of the art world.

His current protege is 33-year-old British painter Cecily Brown, who's had two solo shows at Gagosian spaces in America in the past year - though ironically the British artist most recently honoured with a solo show in New York was Britart Godfather Michael Craig-Martin, who taught many of the Goldsmith's-educated YBA gang.

Even more ironically, veteran painter Malcolm Morley, who has lived in the US since 1958, is still one of the most famous British artists in the States - certainly more famous than Hirst or Emin - and it was Morley, remember, who won the very Þrst Turner Prize in 1984.

The Virgin Mary, meanwhile, survived the humiliating dispute of 1999. On the day Sensation opened, along with a grab-bag of agitators representing every shade of American opinion on subjects from the death penalty to racism, one group of protesters carried a banner with a telephone number for those who wanted to know more about the mother of Jesus.

Callers heard a recorded message saying that the Virgin Mary and her son had been spotted recently on Long Island and were expected to arrive in Manhattan soon. Just like the young British artists, they haven't quite arrived there yet.

Dissent!

Mark Bridger

The original YBA vandal. Poured black ink into Damien Hirst's Away From the Flock in 1994 (far right), claiming the work made him want to 'seize the day'. Later he piled insult atop injury by suing Hirst for using the black sheep image in a book.

The Daily Mail

Rarely amused by Britart. 'For 1,000 years art has been one of our great civilising forces,' the paper pronounced in 1999. 'Today pickled sheep and soiled beds threaten to make barbarians of us all.'

Aka the Chinese performance artists who messed up Tracey Emin's My Bed at the 1999 Turner Prize exhibition. 'At one o'clock we gave a big loud shout and jumped on the bed very quickly,' Cai Yuan recalled. 'The guards didn't know how to react, but eventually they called the police ... and arrested us.' Works since include Two Artists Piss On Duchamp's Urinal; and Soy Sauce Ketchup Fight.

Politicians (& former politicians)

Kim Howells, number four at the culture department, and no mincer of words, described the work of last year's Turner nominees as 'cold, mechanical, conceptual etc', while former Tory MP and writer George Walden has always maintained there's more 'wit, intelligence, savvy and originality' in a single episode of The Simpsons than there is in all YBA output.